By REID TUCKER
Braves junior-to-be Clay Willcox achieved beyond his expectations at the World Powerlifting Alliance 2013 Raw World Championships, held last weekend in DeFuniak Springs. Willcox, 16, the sole representative of Walton County at the international-level weight lifting meet, completed eight of nine lifts and set two PRs over the course of the two-day event. The meet, the first of its kind to be held in northwest Florida, attracted lifters from all around the United States and from as far away as Central Europe, with athletes from Ukraine and Transnistria also competing. The event was held Saturday, July 27, and Sunday, July 28, at Walton High School, another first for the area, and Willcox did right by his school and community, posting impressive numbers in his weight class and age division. “I’m proud of what I was able to do and I’m impressed with the quality of the other lifters,” Willcox said. “There’s always a good atmosphere (at a meet), but this time I knew it was a really big deal with the people here from other countries, so I wanted to do my best. I’m glad I could do well in front of the home crowd.” Willcox, weighing in at 148 pounds, completed all three lifts in the bench press, culminating in a 209-pound lift, and similarly went 3-for-3 in the dead lift event, attaining a maximum weight of 336.2 pounds – both personal bests in competition. He scratched on his second lift of the squat event, but he rallied back in his follow-up attempt, pushing 303 pounds with no trouble in his final lift. His total weight for the weekend’s “full power” competition was 847.8 pounds with a coefficient of 619.041. Willcox trained three or four days a week for several months leading up to the meet, but the young lifter said he didn’t alter his training strategy too much even if the stakes were the highest since he began competing a little more than a year ago. “It’s just about getting in there and lifting on a consistent basis,” Willcox said. “If you’re dedicated and you have a good team supporting you, you can do just about whatever you try to do. It takes a lot of hard work, but hard work always pays off.”